I start all my dogs finding the leg with food. Then usually can hold the food in my left out away from their head and maintain focus on me, then start moving a step or two and rewarding, then switch to toys, reward from anywhere and life is good
With her it was a bit different. Did the finding the leg with food and was fine. I got her at age 3 and was only in a kennel, didn't have anything else really and it took 3 weeks just to get her to learn to come take food from my hand. But she learned the leg rather quickly, but any movement just put her into overdrive and could maintain nothing that could be called healing, so I ended up doing more of a food lure to give her the idea of walking at my side. That seemed to work then moved back to finding the leg with small steps.
At some point I created her butt out thing, front shoulder to knee was ok, but the butt would go out. Did ladders to teach foot awareness because she had none. Taught her place markers on a tub, and then did some perch work and she can move her butt in now, she knows "get in", but from a stationary or pivoting position, I just haven't been able to get it to transition to getting her to move it back in while moving forward.
I think I created this whole mess by holding the ball in my right hand, though I was tossing it behind my back and to my left to reward. Instead of her breaking out to the left to get it, she would step away (create space between us) then turn into me (right) then run off behind and to my left to get her reward, so she was like spinning in a circle. I;\'m pretty sure this created her butt out heeling. I'd keep rewarding because he head and front shoulder position looked good, but because I wasn't using a mirror or spotter, didn't notice the butt creeping out unless I turned my shoulders and looked back, which of course would "fix" it because of my body position.
I could fix it easy enough by just holding the ball in my left hand, but when it wasn't there, things went right back to what they were. So I tried rewarding from a static position, mark, but get her attention to go forward left, then chase the ball back and left when I threw it. Like an arching motion and movement from her. I swear I was going to lose fingers marking and then trying to get her to chase my hand and ball so she'd go after her reward in a way that would help fix her hind end in heeling.
Does that make sense? Much easier for me to demonstrate than try and describe. and that worked ok, but lots and lots of reps, it didn't ever seem to carry over from one session to the next. After we did it a bit, it got much better, but by the next session it was like starting from scratch again.
One day I noticed that heeling for bites from someone else, she was much better. So i decided to just drop a reward and let her see me do it, then go heel. Coupled with short heeling and making her get her butt in all the time and doing some left pivots, i'm hoping this will stick. Seems to be getting better, more so than the other things i've tried. SHe seems to be able to think thru things a bit better when she "knows" there's a reward that's not on me. Once I can get the "get in" to mean something when we're moving I think i'll be able to get past this quickly
Would have been much easier had I not created this in the first place, but that's dog training sometimes